By 1910, Leo Tolstoy, the world's most famous author, had become an almost religious figure, surrounded on his lavish estate by family and followers alike. Set in the tumultuous last year of the count's life, The Last Station centres on the battle for his soul waged by his wife and his leading disciple. Torn between his professed doctrine of poverty and chastity on the one hand and the reality of his enormous wealth, his thirteen children, and a life of hedonism on the other, Tolstoy makes a dramatic flight from his home. Too ill to continue beyond the tiny station of Astapovo, he believes he is dying alone, while outside over one hundred newspapermen are awaiting hourly reports on his condition. Narrated in six different voices, including Tolstoy's own from his diaries and literary works, The Last Station is a richly inventive novel that dances bewitchingly between fact and fiction.
The Reviews
An impressively knowing and sensitive performance, a wistful late twentieth-century tribute to the giant conflicts of a more titanic age.Observer
One of those rare works of fiction that manage to demonstrate both scrupulous historical research and true originality of voice and perception.
New York Times Book Review
Paperback
384 pages
Price: £8.99
ISBN: 9781841959672 Other editions
Paperback
Jay Parini, a novelist and poet, is Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College in Vermont. His six novels include The Last Station, Benjamin's Crossing and The Apprentice Lover. His volumes of poetry include The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems. In addition to biographies of John Steinbeck, Robert Frost, and William Faulkner, he has written a volume of essays on literature and politics as well as The Art of Teaching. He edited the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature and writes regularly for the Guardian and other publications.
